Centre for Peace Studies

For the last 20 years CPS has been working on many peacebuilding, education and human rights programs in Croatia and Balkan region. CPS uses different methods, from collaboration and support, advocacy, public policies work, research, education to direct confrontations with the government. It is a watchdog organization believing that monitoring of the government policies from civil society perspective is a crucial balance of power for a healthy democracy.

To point out some of CPS relevant work and accomplishments:

Promoting peace education. For 18 years we are running independent one-year long Peace Studies program, and also have developed and implemented series of custom made trainings for communities, youth, teachers, public servants, and other groups. Also we are very vocal for introduction of civic and peace education in Croatian formal education system.

Combating hate crime and different forms of discrimination in Croatia. We organized and implemented number of trainings on Anti-Discrimination Act for different groups such as lawyers, NGO representatives, police, students etc. With our legal team we have won several discrimination cases, protecting Roma population, ethnic and sexual minorities in Croatia.

Monitoring the work of police, military and intelligence agencies and advocating for the introduction of the human security concept in Croatia. Recently we have also opened a program dedicated to economy and human rights issues, advocating for more social justice and less socio-economic inequalities in our society.

Although we have been working on asylum, integration and migration topics since 2004 our work was particularly publicly recognized during the recent refugee crisis where CPS has established independent citizens’ initiative “Refugees Welcome”. 500 volunteers were active in helping thousands of refugees passing through or staying in Croatia. For that work we have already received two national human rights awards.